Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ Cycle A

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

The Most Controversial Food

There are lists of the most controversial foods on earth. Some list 10 of these. Others have 15 on their list. Whatever the number in the list, it shows that there are foods which are controversial, foods that bring on a debate whether we humans should eat them or not.

On one list which is found in the thedailymeal.com the first food listed as controversial is Beluga Caviar. It is the salted egg of the fish sturgeon which is found in the Caspian and Black Seas. One reason why it is so controversial is because it is very expensive, $4,000 per pound or $8,800 per kilogram. (This is about 400,000 in Philippine pesos, where an ordinary fish costs only 100 pesos per kilo.) And it is controversial also because the fish which produces this egg is becoming rare.

But there is a food which is the most controversial of all. It has spawned debates all over the world for centuries, and the debate is not over yet.

That food is the subject of our Gospel reading today. It created a stir among the people when Jesus introduced this food for the first time. This food was the reason why many of his disciples left him. It seems that all the seventy two disciples mentioned in Luke 10:1 whom Jesus sent before on a mission left him. Only the twelve remained. And were it not (humanly speaking) for the very prompt reply of Peter to Jesus' question whether any of the twelve would also leave him, some of the twelve might have dropped from the company of Jesus. For the Jews it was controversial because it was most repugnant to them to eat human flesh and drink blood.  

This food indeed was very controversial to have effected such a result. In reality it is the most controversial food in the world.

Children in the elementary grades are now taught the food pyramid, the kinds of food in a drawing like a pyramid which they need to consume in proper quantities in order to grow, glow and go. These are the carbohydrates, the proteins, the fats, free sugars, the vitamins and minerals. This food pyramid evolved into MyPyramid. And this in turn was changed into MyPlate, where the drawing now is not a pyramid but a plate with the kind and quantity of the different foods drawn proportionately in the plate.

All these foods serve to nourish the body and mind or soul.  But this most controversial of all foods is not meant to nourish the body and soul only. It is meant primarily to nourish the spirit, our spirit. This is the only food which can truly nourish our spirit.

This food is controversial for other reasons. Theologians have debated for centuries whether this food is flesh and blood in the form of bread or only bread wine but they point to the reality of flesh and blood.

We Catholics have maintained throughout the history of the Church that this food is actually flesh and blood in the form of bread and wine. What we see are bread and wine but actually they are the flesh and blood of Jesus. The process whereby this happens is called by our theologians as transubstantiation. The non-Catholics who evolved from the Reformation think that this food is actually bread and wine but they refer or point to the reality of Jesus' flesh and blood. Some of them call the process of how this happens as consubstantiation. This means that the bread and wine are still there, but so are the flesh and blood of Christ. Our Church teaches that what we see as bread is not really bread but the flesh of Jesus and what we see as wine is not really wine but the blood of Jesus.

This debate is still going on and will continue to go on, until Jesus comes back. 

This is the significance of the solemnity which we celebrate today, the solemnity of the body and blood of Christ. We are celebrating Jesus' giving to us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. These foods nourish our spirits. There are cases of saints whose body and soul were also nourished by this food alone, as was the case with St. Catherine of Siena who ate only this food for many years.

One of the writers on the Holy Scriptures whom I liked very much when I was still studying formal theology was William Barclay. He explains the Bible in such a simple way that the average person is able to understand him. This is not surprising when we read that Barclay had dedicated his life to "making the best biblical scholarship available to the average reader".

Later I found out that William Barclay had become a universalist, a person who believes that eventually all will be saved, even Judas the traitor, even those who blasphemed God and died unrepentant. But this does not make all his writings of no value. After all we have great theologians who wrote questionable teachings, like Origen and Tertullian, but who wrote wonderful works of theology.

I introduce William Barclay because he has something so beneficial for us in our attitude towards the Eucharist, although he belonged to the Church of Scotland. His writings on this matter reflect the views of St. Teresa of Avila in her emphasis on the humanity of Jesus. Here are some thoughts from Barclay in his commentary on the body and blood of Jesus.

For Barclay to eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus is to feed our heart, feed our mind, feed our soul with the thought of Jesus’ humanity, so that when we are discouraged and in despair, when we are beaten to our knees and disgusted with life and living, we remember that Jesus took our life and our struggles as his. When we do this suddenly our life and flesh are clad with glory for they are touched with God. To eat Christ's body is to feed on the thought of his manhood until our own manhood is strengthened and cleansed and irradiated by his.

To drink Jesus’ blood is to take his life into the very center of our being, we take his life into the very core of our hearts. When Jesus enters into our hearts we can feed upon the life and the strength and the dynamic vitality that he gives to us. Jesus said that we must drink his blood. He is saying: "You must stop thinking of me as a subject for theological debate; you must take me into you, and you must come into me; and then you will have real life."

Barclay continues, when he told us to eat his flesh and drink his blood, he was telling us to feed our hearts and souls and minds on his humanity, and to revitalize our lives with his life until we are filled with the life of God.

In the first reading we are reminded that the Israelites ate manna in the desert for forty years. The word manna means “What is it?” This came from the sky. It was a figure of the food which Jesus would give us, his own flesh and blood for the sustenance of our spirits.

In the second reading Paul writes about the Eucharistic meal which the first Christians partook of to remember Jesus. He clearly tells the Corinthian Christians by a rhetorical question that when they drink the wine they participate in the blood of Christ and when they eat the bread they participate in the body of Christ.

Jesus gives us himself as our food. There is a curious detail here from the Evangelist John or Jesus' choice of words. In verses 49-53 the word used for eating the flesh and blood of Jesus is the ordinary word for eating which in Greek is esthio. In verse 54, however, the word used is no longer esthio but trogo, which means I "munch" or I "gnaw", that is, I keep on chewing or biting the raw flesh and blood of Jesus. It is continuous eating or eating with relish for quite some time, enjoying every bite and chewing of it.

This is what Jesus wants. He wants to be eaten by us again and again until we become more and more like him, our body becoming like his body and our blood or life—because life is in the blood, becoming like his blood and life.

For our prayer today let us take the first stanza of the hymn, Lord, Who at Your First Eucharist Did Pray. This hymn by William H. Turton tells us that the final result of our eating the body and blood of Jesus is that we become more and more like him and thus we will all love one another and there will be one Church as Jesus prayed during his last Supper. Let us bow our heads.

Lord, who at your first Eucharist did pray

that all your church might be for ever one,

grant us at every Eucharist to say

with longing heart and soul, 'Your will be done':

O may we all one bread, one body be,

through this blest sacrament of unity. Amen.

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Note for the readers:

The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.

NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this translation.

AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking world.

Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ Cycle C

Welcome to read homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we “are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NAB).

Abundance or Scarcity?

Radio, television and other means of mass media have given most of you ideas about what is called the gospel of success although you may not know explicitly that this was the gospel of success. This gospel has other names. It is also called prosperity theology, prosperity gospel, the health and wealth gospel. Basically it teaches that material wealth is God's will for all of us. All of us can be healthy and wealthy if we follow God's will. And it is God's will that we have faith in this truth, that we speak only positive things about ourselves and others and that we give to God's work our donations of tithes and other gifts so that God can bless us with better health and more wealth.

In our country we have heard about the El Shaddai movement which teaches this gospel of prosperity. Some leaders and members of the Catholic Renewal Movement also preach this gospel of success. Among our non-Catholic brothers and sisters there are some who also promote this message of health and wealth for all. They put forth verses like Jesus saying, I came that they may have life and life in abundance (John 10:10). Usually they incorporate in their messages that if we want to be blessed by God we have to give him a part of our income.

But there are other Christians who oppose this gospel of success and prosperity. They argue that Jesus was born poor, lived poor, and died poor. If we are genuine Christians, followers of Jesus, we have to live like him, poor. They mention that Jesus condemned wealth in the parable of the rich man who acquired so many things, then told his soul to rest but that very night he died. They also cite that famous statement of Jesus that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.  

So does Jesus want us to have prosperity or scarcity or just sufficiency?

Our Gospel reading today gives us an answer to this question. In the story Jesus multiplied five loaves of bread and two pieces of fish so that these were able to feed five thousand people. The more wonderful detail in the story is that the people were satisfied and there were still twelve wicker baskets of left over. This detail is mentioned by all four evangelists and they agree on the number of baskets, twelve.

In other words Jesus multiplied bread and fish that were more than the amount needed by the people. Some of us may notice the appropriateness of the number twelve. It seems that each apostle had a basket of left over food.

If we observe nature which is a creature of Jesus as the Word of God it produces abundance to an exaggerated degree. Take the mango tree. One seed of mango tree planted and grown to maturity produces millions of flowers and tens of thousands of fruits in its lifetime which can be three hundred years. The same can be said of the seed of a grain. One seed in time produces grains enough to fill granaries. The world Jesus created is a world of abundance.

What is most important for us to remember is that Jesus gives of himself in abundance. Today we celebrate the solemnity of the body and blood of Christ. He gives of himself through the bread and wine in the Mass in abundance. He does not spare himself. He even gives himself to those who are not properly prepared to receive him in holy communion. He gives himself to saints and sinners alike.

According to world estimates there are 1.2 billion Catholics all over the world. If even only one percent of that receive the body and blood of Jesus that would be 12 million, a staggering number. Jesus feeds 12 million people with his  body and blood. Surely this is feeding us with abundance.

What Jesus wants us to have is not an abundance of perishable things like material wealth, but of the things that matter most in life. And nothing is of more value than his own body and blood. This is perfect food for all humanity.

What more can we ask of Jesus greater than his own body and blood? He has given us himself and with this he has given us all things, as the Apostle Paul affirms in his first letter to the Corinthians. He says, "Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours" (3:21-22 AV).

Jesus has given us everything, more than what we need. It is only proper that we surrender to him all that we are and all that we have.

For our prayer today let us recite the famous prayer attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola which has been put into song. Let us bow our heads in prayer.

Take and receive, O Lord, my liberty. Take all my will, my mind, my memory. All things I hold and all I own are yours. Yours is the gift, to you I all resign. Do you direct and govern all and sway, do what you will, command and I obey. Only your grace, your love on me bestow. These make me rich, all else will I forego. Amen.